Retailers: A Drag on Job Growth

By Quentin Fottrell

Jobs growth slowed significantly in March, according to the latest data released by the Labor Department Friday. Jobs excluding agriculture grew by 120,000 last month — half the growth in February — the first time since November 2011 that job growth came in below 200,000. And, while store sales appear encouraging partly due to a warm winter and Easter falling two weeks earlier than last year, according to results released this week, jobs growth last month slowed significantly in that sector. The Gap and Target showed improvements, while CostCo and teen fashion outlet Buckle fared less well. Meanwhile, jobless claims data released Thursday showed numbers fell to the lowest level in nearly four years last week.

So why aren’t retailers hiring?

Big box and department stores have been employing stricter control of inventories instead of new workers, economists say. They’re also demanding higher productivity from existing workers. This shift “has long term implications for employment: fewer retail workers and less square footage,” says Patrick O’Keefe, director of economic research at J.H. Cohn consultants in Roseland, N.J. They’re also centralizing checkouts and introducing self-service machines, says independent retail consultant Jeff Green, which means a longer walk for shoppers in search of a till and less floor personnel.

Retail-sector job opportunities keep shrinking. In the five years prior to the recession (2003-2007), stores accounted for 13.6% of all private sector jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; but during the jobs recovery – which began in earnest in March 2010 — the retail sector has only provided 9% of the total private sector gains. While auto and gasoline sales have shown some momentum in recent months, “recovery in the rest of the retail sector has been rather tepid,” O’Keefe says.

Department stores also appear to be experiencing a choppy recovery. During February, retail trade lost 33,800 jobs in March after losing 7,400 jobs in February — on a seasonally adjusted basis or taking into account the holiday sales. Jobs plummeted by 32,300 at general merchandise stores and by 21,000 at department stores, after falling by 35,400 and 25,000 respectively in February. But sporting, book and music stores added 1,200 jobs last month after adding 12,400 jobs in February. Investment blogger Andy Nyquist says warm weather has encouraged people to bulk up on their outdoor equipment and sports goods. “It’s one of the many benefits of an early spring,” he says.

Still, with tentative signs of a jobs recovery underway, others say it’s too soon to know if the retail sector will under-perform the overall jobs market throughout 2012. If department stores shed more jobs in the months ahead, it may reflect more seismic changes in how people shop, says Betsey Stevenson, assistant professor of business and public policy in The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “For instance, I rarely shop in department stores anymore because I almost exclusively at discount retailers, Amazon, and boutiques.”

Comments (4 of 4)

Disable the search button in Android – Stack Overflow
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Disable the search button in Android
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I have a dialog in an Android app that I don’t want the user to be able to cancel. Using .setCancelable(false) disables the back button, but pressing the search button still cancels the dialog. I saw this question which told me that I should include
public boolean onSearchRequested()
return false;

But I’m still able to cancel the dialog with the search button. Here’s my code:
public class TestActivity extends Activity
/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
showDialog(0);

;
try this above thing in your dialog hope that will work for you.
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answered
Mar 23 at 6:06
Herry
1,7741425
feedback
up vote
1
down vote
I disable search button by overriding progress dialog. I create unnamed class and override method onSearchRequest() . And this is working for me.
I use this:
progressDialog = new ProgressDialog(Activity.this)
@Override
public boolean onSearchRequested()
return true;

If this doesn’t work for your Activity class then you’ll probably need to create a subclass of Dialog and implement the onKeyDown method for your dialog class.
share|improve this answer
edited
Mar 23 at 0:21
answered
Mar 23 at 0:09
slayton
8,64821038
Thanks, but this isn’t working for me. I replaced the onSearchRequested function in my code with this code, except that I removed the break; statement because Eclipse gave me an unreachable code error. My dialog can still be dismissed by pressing the search button. – BenH Mar 23 at 0:17
Hmm.. ok then you probably need to create a subclass of Dialog and override its onKeyDown method – slayton Mar 23 at 0:21
feedback
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0
down vote
public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent event)
if(event.ACTION_DOWN==KeyEvent.KEYCODE_SEARCH)
return false;
else
return super.onKeyDown(keyCode, event);

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